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Adams County assessors cut taxes for prominent family by $216,000

The house in 13536 York St. in Thornton, CO. The properties 13500 and 13536 York St. are enclosed by 27 luxurious acres, ponds, tennis court, bulls in a field, most classified as a gland. These properties won big tax breaks on appeal from Adams Assessors. Wednesday, June 13. (Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post)

BRIGHTON — Adams County Assessor Gil Reyes and his predecessor personally handled dozens of tax appeals from a prominent local family, shaving more than $5 million from the taxable values of their lands.

The successful — and unusual — direct appeals to Reyes and W.R. "Skip" Fischer, now the chairman of the county commission, saved the Carlsons, a family of land developers, at least $216,000 in taxes, a Denver Post investigation found.

The Carlsons, campaign contributors to both assessors, were especially successful in their appeals to Reyes.

Appeal records provided by the assessor's office show Fischer denied about two-fifths of the Carlson appeals he handled from 1999 to 2003, a year he served as deputy assessor after Reyes' election in 2002.

The home at 13500 York St., left, sits on 19 acres. The site includes a field for two longhorn steers and a pumpkin patch, and has been taxed as agricultural since 2000. The value of 13536 York St. was cut by $300,000 in 2005. (Photos by Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post)

Reyes upheld proposed appraisals on some lightly taxed tracts of vacant land owned by the Carlsons. But on appeals of properties worth $100,000 or more, they won reductions from Reyes in 31 of 33 cases — a 94 percent success rate.

By comparison, 51 percent of all appeals to the Adams County assessor's office since 1999 have succeeded.

Fischer, who was named Colorado's assessor of the year during his last year as Adams County assessor, said he tried to treat all property owners fairly and equally.

"It didn't matter if it was the Carlsons or who it was. I tried to do the job I was supposed to do," he said.

Assessors in neighboring counties have said they rarely, if ever, personally decide appeals from property owners. But Fischer defended the practice.

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"A person who owns a lot of property in the county and has been one of your supporters, they're going to come in and want to talk to you. There's nothing wrong with that," he said.

Reyes declined to comment except for a statement issued by his attorney, Daniel Recht.

"Gil Reyes never appraised any property illegally, unethically or in any inappropriate fashion," Recht said.

Taxable values slashed

In 10 cases, Reyes slashed $100,000 to $402,000 from the proposed taxable values of Carlson family homes, lands and commercial buildings. On seven properties, he simply rolled back values to their previous level, freezing their taxable values for four to six years.

Scott Carlson, speaking for the family, attributed the large number of successful appeals to their extensive holdings in Adams County and their habit of appealing whenever a computer-generated mass appraisal causes unexplained jumps in property values.

He said they never asked for special treatment in those appeals.

"We've been in the county for 100-plus years," he said. "We knew Skip personally. We knew Gil personally. I don't think there were things done for us that wouldn't have been done for anyone."

Carlson family members and affiliated companies donated $2,000 to Fischer's 1998 assessor campaign and a total of $2,000 to Reyes' 2002 and 2006 campaigns, state records show. Reyes raised $33,000 from other contributors in 2006 and was unopposed in 2010.

Overall, "our donations are very modest," Scott Carlson said, and have gone to Republican and Democratic candidates.

Most of the Carlson appeals emanated from the Eastlake offices of Carlson Associates Inc., a company built by family patriarch Lee Carlson that employs his sons and grandchildren as developers and real-estate brokers.

In successful appeals personally handled by the assessors, the Carlsons won an average value reduction of 22 percent from 1999 to 2009, county rec-ords show.

For example:

At 1 Avocet Circle, the five-bedroom lakefront home of Clarke and Jo-Ellen Carlson in Lake Avery Estates, a series of successful appeals saved more than $12,000 in property taxes in eight years.

In 2003, Fischer sliced off an even $100,000 on appeal, reducing its taxable value from $804,100 to $704,100. Reyes then cut its appraised value from $939,100 to $746,350 in 2005, from $934,900 to $710,000 in 2007, and from $911,384 to $718,000 in 2009.

To the north, a white wooden fence encloses 28 acres whose amenities include tree-shaded ponds, a small sandy beach, expanses of beautifully manicured lawn and a tennis court.

A long tree-lined driveway leads to a pair of estate homes within.

Ag designation

Scott and Lisa Carlson live on the larger, 19-acre spread. Nearly all of this land has been taxed as agricultural since 2000, when Fischer wrote that it had been farmed for at least two years.

Carlson said the land around his home grows pumpkins every year and supports a tree nursery and livestock.

Colorado law does not require a minimum acreage or income for land taxed as agricultural.

The other property, the home of Clay and Jeanie Carlson, won a big reduction in 2005 from Reyes, who cut its proposed value from $1.06 million to $754,610.

In Northglenn, at 11480 Cherokee St., Clarke Carlson owns a warehouse building that an Adams County appraisal valued at $1.7 million in 2005. On appeal, Reyes cut its value to $1.3 million, saving the owner $27,600 in property taxes in two years.

Lack of evident crops

Elsewhere, several swaths of vacant land that Reyes reclassified as agricultural appear to be growing only weeds.

At the northern end of Thornton, Carlson Associates is offering to sell an 18-acre strip of land between a suburban housing development and a strip mall. In 2005, Reyes cut the taxable value of this land 99 percent, from $187,220 to $1,660, by classifying it as agricultural.

Today, stubbled grass strewn with bits of trash covers those acres. The land is still classed as agricultural, though neighbors say they can't recall seeing a crop there. Its 2011 tax bill: $69.16.

A tract that appears unused may be lying fallow for a year between crops, Scott Carlson said.

Carlson said he is not familiar with all the details of those appeals but that he has seen instances when computer-generated appraisals of family properties yielded large spikes in value when "there's nothing in the market that suggests that spike."

In such cases, "we take advantage of the rights under the law to appeal," he said.

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